Blogging from Alaska's Capital

Our About-to-be ex-Governor

Our Gov’s stunning announcement yesterday has the blogosphere buzzing. No one saw it coming. Our first dude’s wife is a 9-day wonder in her unparalleled capacity to grab attention – but I’m guessing that this time she didn’t want it.

If she wanted plenty of media coverage she’d:

Not choose a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend to make her announcement;

Not hold a hastily announced press-conference at her home in our isolated state 2 hours before it happened so that hardly anyone could get to it;

Have warned her spokesperson and brought her home to answer questions;

Have had some prepared remarks that explained her reason for stepping down.

I can easily think of some no-brainer reasons that would have made sense and could have given her a graceful out:

My family needs me;

I’m starting my campaign for President in 2012;

Instead, her announcement was typically off-the-cuff, muddled, waffling, verbose, and ultimately meaningless. This suggests she either didn’t get advice about how to do this, or if she did she ignored it. No-one saw this coming; the behavior of Palin’s out-of-town spokesperson indicated that even she was blind-sided. One can’t avoid coming to the conclusion that something happened last week that triggered a snap decision by the Governor who – typically – didn’t stop to blink but plowed right ahead on her own.

The only thing we know now is that there’s more to this than meets the eye. I’m transfixed, waiting for the cat to exit the bag.